1. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
Painting and decorating can be a quick and easy job, or it can take longer, it depends on a number of key factors. Smart decorating will always provide a fixed quote for work and let you know how long a job should take, but here is what we consider first:
What work will be carried out?
Painting woodwork
Painting ceilings
Wallpapering
Painting walls
Painting Radiators
THEN WE CONSIDER FOR EACH OF THE AREAS:
What will be involved?
How good are the existing walls that need painting or wallpapering?
Do we need to strip any wallpaper?
Are there any bare plaster walls?
Do we need to fill any holes, sand any woodwork or surfaces?
What quality are you looking to achieve?
How many rooms require decorating?
Are there any strong colour changes, i.e. painting over a dark colour with a light colour?
Is all of the room one colour or are multiple colours being used?
Guide times
We provide a full quote for our work, but here are some guides to help you understand roughly how long a job will take:Painting in white (white washing) - 1 day per room
Painting a full room in white (white washing) is usually the cheapest and quickest method. You can usually get the walls, wood work and ceilings done quickly, if you are painting over while or very light paint and the surfaces don't need any preparation.
Painting in colour - 1.5 days per room. Painting a room with white skirtings, white ceilings and colour on the walls, is bold and beautiful, but because you're using multiple colours and probably types of paint, there is more work required.
Painting in colour and prep - 2 days per room. If the room needs wall preparation, holes and cracks filling and sanding work, then the additional work adds additional time. The results are always the most transformative here though.
2: PAINTING A ROOM
Painting a room should be fun, it a great and cost effective way to achieve what you need. If you want some beautiful bold colour, or something subtle and sleek, or you want to refresh and modernish, paint is such a versatile tool.
Whatever your reason for painting, you want a quality result and here is how our master decorators at smart Decorating go about it:
ASSESS
We respect our customers’ needs and budget, making recommendation and helping with design to get the right results. Once colours, themes and the type of paint has been chosen, we order and collect it for you, using our Trade Discounts to keep your costs down.
WRITE
We have all had work done that wasn't agreed in writing, and most of us have regretted it at times. As a well established limited company, we do things right, and write it down. Our advice, work agreed, time frames and cost are all agreed and sent to you for review, before any work starts.
PREP
Preparation for decorating can be time consuming and a bit boring, especially when you want to get on and see the transformation... but is hugely important. If you don't prepare the surfaces you are painting, the paint can look really bad or even flake and peel off.
PAINT
The part that everyone wants to see and our favourite bit. Here is where all of the hard work protecting and preparing pays off. Here is what we do:
We prime any bare wood
We apply 1 or 2 mist coats to any bare or fresh plaster - this is really critical
We gloss the woodwork with durable hard wearing wood paint
We stain block, any water damage or significant stains usually come through new paint, so these areas are treated specially
We cut in - cutting in is where we use paint brushes to go around edges, close to skirtings or where there is a colour change
We roller, applying the paint using the best quality roller sleeves for a great finish
3: WHAT EQUIPMENT DO WE USE
Decorating is made easier with the right tools and we have invested in our people and our equipment. Many areas of decorating are pretty simple and all you need is a brush and a paint caddy, but areas can be really tricky, such as high up on stairs cases. Here are a few of the bits of kit we use and some jargon busting to help:
ROLLER POLE
These are extenders which hold the roller, making high places easy to reach and improving the finish of the paint work.
ROLLER
This is the part which holds the roller sleeve, which you can either hold or attach to your roller pole.
ROLLER SLEEVE
This is the fluffy tube that goes onto your roller and holds all of the paint. This is something we don't scrimp on. the better the quality sleeve, the better the finish. There are also different sleeves for different textures and finishes.
STANDARD BRUSHES
We only use the very best paint brushes, nobody wants a poor finish or bristles stuck in their paint work.. we don't cut corners.
CUTTING IN BRUSHES
These are also very high qlaity paint brushes, but these are angled, to make cutting in easy and ensure a perfect finish for edges and corners.
MULTI-TOOL
An amazing bit of kit, which we use mainly for opening tins of paint correctly and also for cleaning our rollers sleeves. You scraps the curved side down the roller sleeve and it removes about 90% of the paint, which makes cleaning up so much quicker and a lot less messy.
PAINT POTS
Dipping a paint brush directly into a tin of paint means you can't load your brush up correctly and your paint work will really suffer. The right way is to pour some paint into a brush pot.
ROLLER TRAYS
We only use the very best paint brushes, nobody wants a poor finish or bristles stuck in their paint work.. we don't cut corners.
LADDER PLATFORMS
We have all tried balancing and stretching on ladders to get to a tricky to reach spot... our ladder platforms make working at height safe, so we can focus on doing a quality job
SANDING POLE PADS
A really good bit of equipment, helps you sand walls really effectively while covering a bigger area.
PROTECTIVE SHEETS
Ours are the highest quality protective sheets. The difference with high quality ones are they are waterproof, so in the unlikely event there is a spill, you know your carpets and furniture is protected.